Megadrought
A megadrought is a prolonged drought lasting two decades or longer. Past megadroughts have been associated with persistent multiyear La Niña conditions. The term megadrought is generally used to describe the length of a drought, and not its acute intensity. In scientific literature, the term is used to describe decades-long droughts or multi-decadal droughts. Multi-year droughts of less than a decade, such as the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s, are generally not described as megadroughts even though they are of a long duration. In popular literature, multi-year or even single-year droughts are occasionally described as megadroughts based upon their severity, the economic damage they inflict or other criteria, but this is the exception and not the rule.
